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On this first podcast of the week, Noah Rothman, Abe Greenwald, and John Podhoretz try to make sense of who is to blame and basically decide that … but why would I tell you here? You need to download or stream the podcast to find out! This is a cliffhanger! Give a listen.
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I hope Paul Ryan is primaried and loses.
The House Freedom Caucus keeps taking the “my way or the highway” attitude and the result is going to force all other Republicans into negotiating with the Democrats.
Excellent analysis. I think the best way to possibly sell it might’ve been “deficit reduction/entitlement reform”. Otherwise, theres nothing sexy for conservatives to cling to. Evidently, only me and Paul Ryan thought the defederalizing of Medicaid was at all compelling.
If Ryan et al hadn’t put such a bad bill on the table, maybe it would’ve ended better.
Also, I think the Freedom Caucus critics are being somewhat disingenuous. I’ve heard claims leveled from other congressmen that the FC ‘got everything they wanted’, and that there was no way to make them happy. That they’re the party of ‘no’. The moderates seem eager to pin this on the FC, but remember that Ryan’s side wrote this bill in secret and only released it close to the time he actually wanted to vote, and that many in the FC felt the nature of the bill violated promises they’d made.
Great Tweet :
In this podcast (like the last Commentary podcast), they all admit it was a terrible, horrible bill, and then go on to lament that the republicans didn’t have the power of the earmarks (ie ability to bribe/coerce people with MY money) to force or entice people to vote for a bad bill that that subject congressman/woman doesn’t think they should vote for. Good grief.
Something has really been driving me nuts about this healthcare bill ordeal:
Since Obamacare passed 7 years ago, pretty much every Republican has run on “I will repeal Obamacare,” and they have done remarkably well on that platform. It became just 2nd nature to say Obamacare would be repealed once the GOP gets in power.
Then, about 12 to 24 months ago, these two other words started to get added to that line: “…and replace.” Wait, what? Replace Obamacare? With what? Why?
“Well,” we were told, “after all, American healthcare IS pretty expensive, and really DOES need to have some kind of fix, and” blah blah blah and so on. So “replace” meant, “the GOP will have the Federal government start to regulate the health care insurance market more as well, but of course we’ll do it better and smarter than liberals,” etc.
So that idea just got kind of casually added to the discussion, without much debate or thought. It was as if the GOP had all these great ideas of what the federal government could do to “fix” healthcare costs. Other than selling insurance across state lines, I don’t really know of any. So…. we just accepted the premise that the federal government belongs in health care, and we gave it even less thought than the liberals who created Obamacare did.
WHAT WAS WRONG WITH A SIMPLE REPEAL? Either we were wrong for the last 7 years, or the bill is wrong now.
Ryan’s bill would have capped Medicaid spending, eliminated the business mandate and the individual mandate (the business mandate has caused many employers to cut hours back below 30 hours per week), eliminated the Obamacare investment tax and expanded Health Savings Accounts.
Did it repeal the Obamacare regulations? No. But it was still an excellent piece of legislation.
And if Ryan’s bill had passed the House, Ted Cruz and others could have improved it in the US Senate.
But now we have nothing and we are likely to get nothing.
The House Freedom Caucus let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Continued:
I can only think of two possibilities:
I seriously want to know the answer to all this, because I don’t know. Really, why did Obamacare have to be “replaced” by some other GOP healthcare bill? Honestly, why? It reminds me of something Mark Steyn said back in 2009 when Obamacare was being debated – he said conservatives in Europe have lost the argument over whether or not there should be a nanny state – all they can say is that they will administer it better. Have we seriously come to that point?
Another part of the conversation: the trio talks about the pragmatism versus practicality. What about the Constitution? I’m sorry, but the Constitution was written to constrain government from ‘redistributing’ my income to other people .
No, it wasn’t.
Sure medicare reform would be nice. But not at this cost.
Might agree with you if the bill were ‘good’.
Ryan mishandled this.
Worked so well last time. Maybe we should primary Trump.
@Icarus213 I think the answer is this. People just hate change and uncertainty and they hate thinking about or dealing with healthcare. People hated Obamacare because it made them have to think about healthcare when they had not been. Now for better or worse people are kind of used to Obamacare, and now the Republicans were going to upend what they had just gotten used to. The number one argument that sells nationalized healthcare is “Don’t worry, we will take care of it.” This is why people in Canada and England in polls pretty much say they like their systems. Because it removes them of the responsibility and burden of having to worry about it when they are generally healthy. Nationalized healthcare buys peace of mind for people who don’t actually need healthcare at the moment. Most people, most of the time are not sick, and don’t have to deal with sick people.
The only kind of healthcare legislation that will be popular will be that which is sold as “Don’t worry, someone else will take care of it.”
Yah, he thought Trump actually could leverage uncooperative Deep Red District Republicans. But, Trump can’t do jack it seems. Republicans from swing districts might have to run from Trump to keep their seats in the general election and Deep Red Republicans apparently don’t think Trump can do anything to them in their primaries.
This was going to be a party line vote, the party (ie. Republican Party) should have had its game together. Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party for better or worse. In the end party dysfunction is his job to fix. The question is can he do that and still have the party maintain power? Or will that process loose the Republicans the House and Senate? Either one means an end to the Trump agenda, unless he triangulates Bill Clinton style and goes left.
We forget that not every Republican ran on a “Repeal Obamacare” platform. Susan Collins, for example, probably never campaigned in Maine during her 2014 bid for reelection promising to repeal Obamacare. Lisa Murkowski in 2016 in Alaska probably did not either.
As you mentioned, some Republicans ran on “repeal and replace Obamacare,” which can mean just about anything because the replacement could mean that most of the Medicaid expansion is retained.
So, while Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell criticized Obamacare, that does not mean that the votes exist in the US Senate (where the GOP only has 52 nominal Republicans) to repeal Obamacare.
Members of the House, knowing that whether they voted for Ryan’s bill or not, the Senate might not do anything (if they listed to Senator Tom Cotton), why cast an unpopular vote just to get betrayed by the Senate or the House Freedom Caucus? Might as well announce your opposition to Ryan’s bill and say, “I was afraid Ryan’s bill might hurt the elderly and the disabled” in anticipation of the 2018 midterm elections.
Sounds great. I think Medicare is unconstitutional. But I doubt you can find over 25 members of Congress willing to say this publicly.
In politics, most of the time the choice is between a very bad option and a less bad option.
Voting against Ryan’s bill is essentially voting to retain all of Obamacare. By January 2019 the Democrats might control the US House of Representatives and the opportunity for Republicans to reform Medicaid and eliminate the Obamacare taxes will have come and gone.
If you can’t convince the Senate to eliminate the legislative filibuster and/or overrule the Senate parliamentarian on the Obamacare regulations which are ruining the individual health care market, at least you can vote to eliminate the remainder of Obamacare, which Ryan’s bill would have done.
By January 2019 we might wonder why the House Freedom Caucus passed up a chance to cut projected spending by 1 trillion dollars and cut taxes by over 600 billion. Perhaps because they think if they hold out, they can repeal all of Obamacare. But I think they are mistaken. I don’t think the votes are there.
Its always ‘what practical compromise will we make?’. But over time, government power grows, liberty recedes, our government’s financial position weakens. And with it, our own personal prospects. We are jettisoning all the hard earned wisdom about spending, saving, hard work , all for the promise of living beyond our means – for the idea that government can make our lives easier, and smooth life out, all with a little bit of income redistribution.
I’m not talking about politics. I don’t give a damn about politics. I’m talking about freedom and economics.
It doesn’t work , this wealth-spreading. There is not enough money to keep all these promises. We’re already out of money, we’re just using financial structuring to keep the balls in the air right now. If you really look at the finances of our government, and all the future liabilities – it will scare the pants off you! What do you really think the future of this county really is – financially? What is our plan for the time when we’re at the end ?
I thought PaulRyan understood all this. He seemed to a few years ago.
At the rate we’re going, by 2020, no one will consider the GOP nomination worth their trouble.
He does. His plan cut the deficit substantially. Now, we’ll do nothing….and 10 more states are lining up for billions in free Medicaid money. Thanks Freedom Kooks!
You simply don’t see Trump’s secret Xanatos Gambit that only men like Sean Hannity and Bill Mitchell can see.
I had the same reaction (and I like the Commentary podcasts), but to be fair, they may have been saying that repealing earmarks is what prevented the GOP leadership from having sufficient power to force other republicans into voting for the bill, and not actually stating that they liked earmarks or wished that earmarks could return. In other words, the elimination of earmarks is just an explanation for what happened — it is not taking a stand on whether bill should or should not have passed. Like you, I’m glad it didn’t.
Exactly.
Ryan’s bill was worth voting for on the basis of its Medicaid expenditure limits alone. The expansion of Health Savings Accounts, the elimination of the employer mandate which currently discourages businesses from giving people more than 29 hours per week and the elimination of the investment tax were extra bonuses.
Trump said during the campaign that he supported expanding Medicaid further. But Ryan got Trump to endorse a bill that limited Medicaid.
Ryan’s bill did not solve all of the problems created by Obamacare. But had it been enacted, it would have been the largest entitlement reform in American history.